Saturday, July 25, 2015

I realized something about myself yesterday as I sat at my desk eating the lunch I brought from home. Ok, eating the lunch I brought from Panera on my way from home to work.

At the Panera drive-thru, where I'd planned to order creamy tomato soup and a Med-Veg sandwich, my eye fell on a picture of a barbeque chicken flatbread. It looked good enough that I abandoned my go-to order and told the voice in the box to fix me up one of those flatbreads. (I'm spontaneous like that.)

I drove to work, popped the Panera bag in the fridge when I got there, and sat down to a busy morning. It wasn't until about 2pm that my stomach reminded me I had lunch waiting for me. So I took the bag out of the fridge and walked back to my office -- right past the microwave.

The barbeque chicken flatbread, chilled by now with its melty cheese solidified in an oozy pattern, was delicious. I almost wished I'd ordered two of them, not because it wasn't filling -- it was -- but because I didn't want to let the flavor go so soon.

And that's when my realization came. When it comes to hot food or cold food, I prefer formerly hot food cold. Does that make me weird? (Ok, so what really makes me weird is the fact that I've thought about this enough to devote an entire blog post to it.)

The cold flatbread was not a culinary anomaly. This morning I had two, formerly hot, panko-breaded chicken tenders, leftover from last night, with a side of fruit salad.